A low-key army of civil servants helped the U.K.'s main political parties navigate through a murky constitutional maze for which there is no legal map as they jockeyed to form a government in recent days.

This mass of bureaucrats is responsible for tasks that include everything from advising party negotiators on constitutional issues -- in a country that doesn't have a codified written constitution -- to making sure that the queen is available should the outgoing prime minister need to resign, as Gordon Brown did Tuesday, or an incoming leader require her formal blessing to form a new government.